My thoughts on the 2014 Abbotsford municipal election. Actually just about the SD34 Board of Education Trustee election.
I’d like to start by thanking the 3500 people who voted for me. It was a great experience and my first time putting myself out there in a city context. I hope to run for School Trustee again in four years.
It’s interesting to look at the election results and compare them to the campaigns run. As expected the incumbents were re-elected (generally the majority of incumbents get re-elected for school trustee, though it is by no means easy), but the interesting thing is the numbers for the non incumbents.
I had no signs and very little advertising, am a relative unknown, and it was my first time running. My total spent on the election was just under $75. What I had going for me (in my opinion, yours may differ) was an issue focused platform. The most common thing I heard was a variation on “I didn’t know much about you before today, but I like what you’re saying”. For that I received 3500 votes.
Some quick spit-balling:
- I think that you get about 1000 votes for having your name on the ballot
- I think between 1000 and 3000 votes comes from having a perceived good platform
- I think between 2000 and 4000 votes comes from having good signage
- I think between 1000 and 3000 votes comes from having perceived experience
- I think that you get about 1000 votes for being an incumbent
- I’m unsure how much is affected by name recognition before the election season begins but I”m guessing it’s between 500 and 1500 votes.
Now these numbers are based on my perceptions of how experienced the candidates are, how many ads they had, and how developed (regardless of if I agreed with it or not) their platform was.
After running the numbers based on that (I didn’t count any numbers for name recognition as I figured it would be accounted for in rounding) I have only two people who fall more that a thousand votes away (so more than can be accounted for by name recognition) from what I based it on. One of whom was above-and I suspect it’s because they are significantly better known than I’m accounting for in the name recognition category. Which leaves only Balbir Gill as falling lower than my numbers (compiled after the election so take everything with a grain of salt).
I’m disappointed that Balbir didn’t win. I feel that he has as much experience as anyone who was running, he had a solid platform (though he might want to work on having a condensed version as there was a lot of text on his pamphlets), he had what I felt was enough signs to get his name out there. I’m not sure why out of all the candidates he was the only one who didn’t fit into my numbers. Just take a look at his Candidate Q&A from the Abby News. He would have made a great Trustee.
So those are my thoughts about the election. You may disagree, or may have other thoughts about it.
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